GTFO Man: A new way to evaluate draft picks

At least we never picked these guys [Courtesy of Getty Images]

A “draft grade” is a fun knee-jerk reaction, a take so simplified and easily digestible that it can be packaged within a single letter grade. But in terms of substance and depth, these grades are about as useful as your annual US News College Rankings. While typically capable of pointing out the best-of-the-best (Stanford, Harvard, 2011 Niners draft class, etc.) and the bottom feeders (Bob’s Online Typing School for Profit and Real Employment, 2012 Niners draft class, etc.) they struggle to differentiate the middle 90% of draft classes. And just like said school rankings, these draft grades are often biased based on brand name (when was the last time the Patriots were given a bad grade?), incapable of quantifying locker room and schematic fit, and lacking in the overall nuance, depth, and context needed to paint an accurate picture of draft successes or failures.

So this year I’ll be breaking down every Niners pick through my own made up evaluative system called — for no reason other than my own childish amusement —“GTFO Man.” While it won’t be nearly as clean nor as simple as a draft grade, GTFO Man will (hopefully) give us a better understanding of how well the Niners are doing at maneuvering through the draft to supplement their roster. The system is based around five factors that are integral to draft success; they’re listed below in order from most to least important:

1. Good Evaluation

2. Top Tier

3. Fills Need

4. Optimizes Slot Value

5. Manages Future Capital

Good Evaluation: Obviously, this is far and away the most important factor to winning the draft. Based on an entirely non-scientific guess, player quality is at least 75% of any success metric. You could be picking guys too early, not targeting positions of need, and making bad value swaps to move around draft slots, but if everyone you pick is a winner, so are you. For these purposes, this category encompasses the proper evaluation of everything from skill, size, and athleticism, to schematic and locker room fit, to injuries and off-the-field issues. It’s the whole package of how you grade a player.

Theoretical Example Pt. 1: The standard prospect rating system grades all players from 4.00 (not worth an invite to the 90-man training camp) to 9.00 (the second coming of God… unless that was Jesus. I’m not up on my theology). After evaluating all of the players they deem potentially draftable, the Niners will order them based on these grades and put them into a “big board” of prospects. 

Top Tier: When teams construct their big boards, they group players with similar overall grades and draft ranges (or where the team would feel comfortable drafting each player) into tiers. That way it’s easier for teams to determine value clusters (the range of slots/picks in the draft that are loaded with the most talent), maneuver around the areas that they consider sparse with value, and adapt on the fly if their priority targets come off the board earlier than expected. Teams watch as the players in their top-most tiers are plucked off the board, and — when its their own time to pick — they aim to select a player from the highest remaining tier. Thus, their commitment is to overall player value above all else.

Theoretical Example Pt. 2: Let’s say that after their big board is complete, the Niners believe there are four players with grades worthy of a top 5 selection. Those players make up their first tier. After them, they consider seven players to be worthy of a top 15 selection. Those players make up their second tier. After those eleven players, the Niners don’t have a single other player worthy of a top twenty pick, but their third tier (rated as players worthy of a pick anywhere from 20th selection to the end of the first round) has about twenty prospects. This is the draft’s first major “value cluster.”

Fills Need: The amazingly simple and just as amazingly impractical idea of “drafting best player available regardless of position” is often referenced as the mantra for many successful NFL franchises. But in reality, it isn’t. Yes, I believe drafting good players is more important than filling positional holes (hence why it is higher on this list), but entering the draft, which happens after the bulk of free agency, and not trying to patch the holes in your roster is just ignorant (and very late stage Trent Baalke-ish). 

Remember, short-term solutions and long-term investments. If you’re drafting only for the long haul, it’s easy to lose the forest through the trees. In an ideal draft, you absolutely want to address your positions of need. The difficulty is in doing so while adhering to your player tiers.

Theoretical Example Pt. 3: As the draft commences, the Niners (picking at #13) watch as players from their top two tiers are selected ahead of them. With each selection they’re hoping that a prospect from one of their lower tiers jumps into the top 12 picks because each time that happens one of the Niners’ top 11 players is pushed down the line, and the Niners’ chances of getting someone who matches value at pick #13 increase.

If by pick 13 the Niners have three dudes on the board who are in their top two tiers, they’re thrilled. They can now choose a player from the highest remaining tier (most likely their second tier) and — if they so choose — select the player from this tier who fits their greatest position of need. If none of the players in this tier fit positions of need, they could pull the trigger on best player available. If not, they can attempt to trade down so that they can match their slot value with player grade later in the draft.

Optimizes Slot Value: In the most basic terms imaginable, if you’re on the clock and don’t have anyone you want to pick, you should trade down. More specifically, if there are no players available who match the value of the draft slot you hold (i.e. you’re picking at the end of the first round but have no one left on your board with a first round grade), you should trade down. Additionally, if there’s a player you like but you strongly believe — based on other teams’ evaluations and their positional needs and draft slots — that you could select that player later in the draft, you should trade down and select that player later. On draft day, you always want your guys. But optimizing slot value means selecting them as late as physically possible.

Obviously that last situation is the hardest to get right. Teams come out of nowhere to reach on players all the time, and it’s not like the scouting world is open and prioritizes sharing between squads. If the player you like fits the value of the pick and you’re at all worried that you might lose out on him, you should just pick that player. That being said, you have year round scouting and personnel departments, endless notes on the historical draft records and positional needs of opposing teams, and a war room full of dozens of phones that are directly connected to the 31 other GMs in the NFL —phones are ringing 24/7 on draft day. You’re not exactly going in blind in figuring out what teams may like what prospects so you should have a good general idea of who may be available where.

Theoretical Example Pt. 4: By the time the Niners pick at #13, let’s say all of the players from their top two tiers have been selected. The next guy up on their big board is a wide receiver who tops their third tier and who they value at around the 20th pick in the draft. With seven slots in the middle of the first round too big a value loss for them to pick him at 13, and with the Niners strongly believing that no other team considers this guy worthy of anything earlier than a late first rounder, the Niners decide to trade down.

They flip #13 to move back to the 25th pick, accumulating a second and a fourth and a future pick from a team desperate to move up on a quarterback or left tackle that’s still on the board. At the 25th pick in the first round the Niners still think they can get this wideout, who is the 12th best player on their big board (remember, they only graded the top 11 players as worthy of a top 15 selection), plays a position of need, and would optimize slot value (getting a player worth ~20th overall pick at pick 25). And, seeing as the bottom of the first round is where they believe the first “value cluster” of this draft lies, they’re confident that — in the off-chance that their wideout of choice is gone by the time they pick again — they can still get someone of near equal value.

MANages Future Capital: Attacking championship windows is one thing but mortgaging your future by constantly packaging picks to trade up into the first round is quite another. Large roster sizes, eleven players on the field at once, regular substitutions, and a high-risk of injuries in the sport means that roster depth is much more important in the NFL than in any other professional sport. And in a hard-capped league the only way to obtain the high quantities of the young, low cost talent needed to fill out your depth chart is via the draft. 

Additionally, the best way to get more good players in each draft is to draft more players. While a seemingly oversimplified concept, it’s clearly true. Evaluating players is difficult and — just like any other endeavor — if you want to maximize your returns, you should encourage some level of risk-taking in the process. That means selecting some project players or ones with injury concerns, as long as you net enough successes to warrant the failures. No team is going to strike big on every single draft pick; the best way to ensure you get more hits on target is to invest in more rounds in the chamber.

This isn’t to say that trading down for picks is always the right move. Nor is it a condemnation of packaging picks to trade up and get a player who you think is a generational talent. You just can’t make a living off of the latter. Because if you do, it’s only a matter of time before you gut your roster from the inside out. And a team without young players makes for the longest and most arduous of rebuilds.

Theoretical Example Pt. 5: By trading down to accumulate picks, the Niners have already gained draft capital, and they’ve also added a future draft pick, arming them for next year’s draft (where the Niners are likely only getting a 5th round comp pick from the loss of Emmanuel Sanders)

So… now that you’re all well-versed in my made up means of draft pick evaluation, let’s look at three picks over the past few years and how they’d be evaluated within in this system:

Case Study #1
In 2019, the New York Giants select QB, Daniel Jones, Duke with the #6 overall pick

Good Evaluation: Too early to say. But I think he’ll be an NFL starter.

Top Tier: For most people, no, but the Giants were very high on Jones. He was either in their top tier or — as is common when drafting positionally scarcer players such as quarterbacks, tackles, and defensive ends — the Giants committed to reaching back a tier to get their quarterback of the future.

Fills Need: Yes. They had been riding the corpse of Eli Manning like a two-year extended cut of Swiss Army Man. So in this regard, they knocked this pick out of the park.

Optimizes Slot Value: This was the biggest misstep of this move. Even if Daniel Jones turns out to be great, the Giants picked him at #6 when they could have gotten him much much later than that. Jones was, by most people’s accounts, a late first round draft prospect while the Giants had both the #6 and the #17 pick in this draft. And sure, it’s always possible for a QB-desperate team to snatch up a rookie well before the value proposition makes sense, but look at the ten selections between the Giants’ two picks.

You have six teams that are locks NOT to be interested in a quarterback, a Miami team that clearly was trying to sit out this year’s QB class, and a Carolina team that had Cam Newton. This leaves two squads that could have gone quarterback. The Bengals, picking at #10, and the Redskins, who everyone knew loved Dwayne Haskins (and ended up picking him at #15). So realistically, you had one team (the Bengals) who MAY have wanted to go quarterback and could have picked Daniel Jones within the top ten. But they didn’t, instead selecting Jonah Williams, an offensive tackle.

It is INCREDIBLY within reason that the Giants could have gotten Daniel Jones with their 17th overall pick. Which not only means they left 11 slots of draft value on the board, but that they failed to address another major position of need with the player who — by most people’s accounts, including my own — was the best player remaining on the board at the time of the Giants’ first pick. That player, DE Josh Allen, would get picked 7th overall and go on to lead all rookies in sacks with 10.5 for the Jaguars. But that’s not all…

Manages Draft Capital: While the Giants lost the chance to pick a higher valued player or trade down to the (by the most incredibly conservative of estimates) ninth pick and accumulate more draft capital, that’s not where the ripple effects of this pick ended. As the Giants, still desperate for outside pass rush help, would then trade a third and a fifth (or fourth) round pick for Leonard Williams in a contract year, effectively making the same trade we made for Emmanuel Sanders but in the middle of a rebuild and for an underperforming player at a position that they could have filled just months prior. Holy shit.

Summary: While Jones seems likely to become an NFL starter, and — if he becomes a 10-year mainstay — this pick will certainly be deemed a good one down the road. But it’s apparent that the Giants flubbed their last two evaluations, leaving talent and opportunity cost on the table. Throw in the two picks lost for Leonard Williams at a position that they could have addressed with a better player via the draft, plus the financial cost of that decision (Williams is making $17M this year in the fifth-year option of his rookie deal), and the ripple effects of how the Giants mishandled this first round become abundantly clear.

Case Study #2
In 2018, the Indianapolis Colts traded down from #3, netting the #6, #37, and #49 picks in that year’s draft, as well as a second rounder in 2019. At #6 the Colts would select OG, Quenton Nelson, Notre Dame

Good Evaluation: Yes. Incredibly good. Since being drafted, Nelson has started every game for the Colts, being named First-team All-Pro in both of his years in the league. In 2019, he was PFF’s second best guard league-wide. The other players they got in this trade weren’t bad either…

At #37… OT, Braden Smith, Auburn: Since being drafted he’s started 31 of 32 games at right tackle, recording PFF grades of 71 and 79 in his first two seasons.

Then, after trading #49 to the Eagles for picks $53 and #169…

At #52… DE/OLB, Kemoko Turay, Rutgers: While raw in 2018, he exploded out of the gates in 2019, recording an incredible 91.3 PFF rating and 91.0 pass rushing score in just over 80 defensive snaps before going down on IR.

At #169… RB, Jordan Wilkins, Ole Miss: A valuable rotational piece and one of the team’s better inside runners, Wilkins has played in 30 games across two years, recording 300+ rushing yards in each year while averaging 5.8 yards per carry.

In 2019, at #34… CB, Rock Ya-Sin, Temple: While too early to tell what kind of player he’ll become, he started 13 games for the Colts in 2019 and had — by many pundits entering that year’s draft — a late first round grade.

Top Tier: Yes. Nelson was in everyone’s top tier of players. In fact, the only reason he was available at #6 was the same reason the Colts were able to trade out of #3. The difference in positional scarcity between guards and quarterbacks (the Jets picked QB Sam Darnold at #3).

Fills Need: Yes. The Colts had long neglected their offensive line, wasting years throwing picks at the same exact undersized receiver who would never see the field and getting Andrew Luck killed in the process. They needed to address the OL and they did (twice). Along with addressing their pass rush, backfield, and secondary (in 2019).

Optimizes Slot Value: Yes. Nelson was — at the time — considered a steal at #6. That narrative has only been reinforced in the past two years.

Manages Draft Capital: Dear lord, yes.

Summary: This is as big a home run as you could ask for, giving up three slots in draft position while still securing your prized prospect plus two additional starters at positions of need, a key rotational piece, and a potential breakout star as a pass rusher.

Case Study #3
In 2017, the San Francisco 49ers trade down from #2, netting the #3, #67, and #111 picks in that year’s draft, plus a 2018 third round selection. At #3, the Niners would select DE/DT, Solomon Thomas, Stanford

Good Evaluation: Here we can plainly see how getting your player evaluations right is much much more important than any other factor. While Thomas has started 28 games over three years, there’s no denying there were superior players drafted after him both at his position on the edge (Derek Barnett, Jonathan Allen, TJ Watt) and at other positions of need (DeShaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes, Marshon Lattimore).

As for the rest of the picks acquired in the trade, they were involved in a slew of additional trades that I won’t go over in depth, but these are (approximately) the other players we gained.

In 2017, at #31… LB, Reuben Foster, Alabama: Talented? Yes. But we all know how that turned out. This also is NOT a one-for-one trade by any means as we had packaged our second rounder with the Bears’ #111 to move up.

In 2018, at #44… WR, Dante Pettis, Washington: The jury’s out on this one, but the market’s bearish at the moment.

In 2018, at #70… LB, Fred Warner, BYU: Clearly the best player we got out of the trade. Is still improving and should be a mainstay for years to come.

In 2018, at #142… DB, DJ Reed, Kansas State: While he hasn’t gotten a ton of playing time, he’s shown promise as a nickel back and can at least moonlight some replacement snaps as a safety.

Top Tier: Yes. Many people were very high on Solomon Thomas, and I would venture to say he was a top five pick in the eyes of most NFL GMs. And when the Niners moved up into the back end of the first round to select Reuben Foster, they did so because he was a top five talent in their minds.

Fills Need: Yes. Edge rusher was a huge position of need. So were LB when we got Foster, WR when we got Pettis, and (unfortunately) LB once again when we drafted Warner.

Optimizes Slot Value: Yes. We got a boatload of picks that became four players to move down a SINGLE draft slot. And we got the player who we wanted at our original slot as well.

Manages Draft Capital: Yes.

Summary: It’s a pointless effort to look back on who a team “could have” drafted while armed with the knowledge of the present. But while the Niners did a marvelous job of milking value out of moving a single draft slot, it was their player evaluations — especially in 2017 — that prevented this from being an absolute slam dunk of a trade. Mahomes, Watson, Lattimore, Jamal Adams, and Christian McCaffrey all played positions of need and all went within ten picks after the Niners picked Solomon Thomas. While Ryan Ramczyk, many people’s top offensive tackle and a guy who has had 81+ PFF grades his entire career before being named a First-Team All-Pro and PFF’s top offensive lineman in 2019, went a single pick after Foster to end the first round. This trade was still a win. It could have been a blowout. Oh well…

Next up, a look at the Niners’ options in the first round…